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Finding D-QU: The Lonely Struggle of California’s Only Tribal College

In 2005, D-Q University, California’s only tribal college, was shut down after a 35-year struggle. Since then, the school’s board of trustees, past students, and community members have tried to reopen the school against all odds. Finding D-QU looks at the often-conflictive relationship between the board and the property’s illegal occupants.

This current struggle frames the history of the school, beginning with its establishment in the midst of 1960s civil rights activism and outlines its original vision as a space for self-determined higher education. The film provides a lens in which we can critically examine the wider American Indian movement toward self-determination and sovereignty in its historical context and as it exists today.